But in the kernel source tree, deep inside drivers/misc/mediatek/conn_mgr/ , there remains a patch file named:
/* original suspend logic continues... */ }
/* * Fixed: December 2023. * If you are reading this in 2025 and battery drain returns, * look for new PM_QoS votes. They multiply like rabbits. * - Lena Wei, last commit of the year. */ And somewhere in MediaTek’s Hsinchu office, Dr. Chen quietly merged Lena’s fix into the 2024 driver branch, pretending he had written it himself. Because in the world of chipset drivers, credit is fleeting—but a working phone is forever. mediatek driver 2023
For the next 14 hours, Lena reverse-engineered the driver’s state machine. She found that mtk_disp_qos_boost() was called by a display IRQ that never fired the corresponding release. The fix was six lines of code:
The header ends with:
It was a zombie driver. Alive, breathing, and eating battery. At 8:13 AM, Lena joined a video call with MediaTek’s driver team in Hsinchu. On the screen: a balding senior architect named Dr. Chen, who had authored the original sleep controller in 2019.
“If I disable it, the display won’t suspend at all. The phone will die in four hours.” But in the kernel source tree, deep inside
0001-mtk-sleepctl-fix-pm_qos-stale-vote.patch
She compiled the kernel. Flashed it to a test device. Let it sit overnight. They multiply like rabbits